How to Know the Fallacies

How to Know the Fallacies by Samuel M. Crothers

“How to Know the Fallacies” presents a comic dispute between the narrator and his friend Scholasticus, an elderly defender of the old logical curriculum. Scholasticus deplores modern education, which he believes begins with premature “reasoning” in childhood but abandons general ideas and disciplined logic in later study. He complains that contemporary students cannot argue, recognize fallacies, or connect their observations into coherent thought. To him, modern teachers indulge pupils, avoid rules, and exhaust themselves trying to make lessons interesting, whereas the old system of grammar, formal definitions, memorization, and rigorous discipline produced sturdy thinkers. The narrator counters that Scholasticus idealizes the past and blames public schools for every intellectual defect. Old-fashioned logic classes also produced people who could repeat formulas without reasoning well. Moreover, new psychological theories have complicated the old belief that the mind has one fixed and easily governed nature. Yet the narrator proposes that Logic might be revived if it were made concrete and attractive rather than taught through abstract letters, diagrams, and syllogistic formulas. He urges Scholasticus to disguise logical instruction as Nature-Study, Botany, Hygiene, or another popular subject. Scholasticus eventually writes a manuscript called “How to Know the Fallacies; or Nature-Study in Logic.” Though the narrator finds its botanical treatment sometimes strained, he praises its decision to study familiar bad arguments rather than begin with valid reasoning. In Scholasticus’s preface, thoughts are described as living growths emerging from the subconscious mind. An argument consists of connected thoughts: a root or Major Premise, a stem or Minor Premise, and a flower or Conclusion. Fallacies are arguments whose parts only seem to hang together. Rather than treating them as weeds to be destroyed, Scholasticus calls them the wild flowers of the intellectual world and invites readers to learn their names and habits. He illustrates the fallacy of petitio principii, or begging the question, as a tenacious vine that proves a proposition by restating it. Its common form, the circular argument, allows thinkers to remain safely within a closed system, like goldfish swimming endlessly in an aquarium. The argumentum ad hominem is a parasitic growth adapted to the weaknesses and preferences of a particular mind. It enables a person to transform personal desire or advantage into a general law, as in the comforting claim, “I like to do right. I do what I like. Therefore, I do what is right.” It flourishes in politics, theology, commercial interests, and any setting where people wish to justify conclusions they already favor. Ignoratio elenchi, the irrelevant conclusion, is compared to a grafted fruit tree: an argument begins by promising to prove one thing but, unnoticed, changes into a demonstration of another. Scholasticus also discusses the cross-fertilization of fallacies, in which two half-truths from separate fields produce a showy and persuasive hybrid. Arguments may be dwarfed when they threaten to prove too much; by training, pruning, and limiting principles, people can keep their ideas conveniently moderate and prevent one conviction from crowding out another. Critics are treated as pests that either cut arguments off at the roots or suck the life from their inferences. Destructive criticism has ruined a theological friend’s once-famous garden of dogmas, leaving him to cultivate only those “fruits of the spirit” that can survive attack. The Criticus Academicus may be less dangerous than common gumption, but the deadliest enemy is reductio ad absurdum, which covers an argument with dry humor until no cure is possible. Finally, Scholasticus describes statistics as an artificial fertilizer. Used carefully by experts, they may support valid conclusions; used indiscriminately, they make an excellent mulch for fallacies. One can gather irrelevant opinions through circulars, arrange them in rows or curves, call this “tabulating the results,” and spread the material over favored arguments. The narrator congratulates Scholasticus on making Logic almost interesting and asks him next to teach correct reasoning. Scholasticus admits that he wishes he could.

By Samuel M. Crothers · First published 1917 · Genre: Satirical Essay, Humorous Nonfiction, Philosophical Essay · 8,687 words

First lines

My friend Scholasticus was in a bad way. He had been educated before the elective system came in, and he had a pathetic veneration for the old curriculum. It was to him the sacred ark, now, alas, carried away into the land of the Philistines. He cherished it as a sort of creed containing the things surely to be learned by a gentleman, and whoso hath not learned these things, let him be anathema. In meeting the present-day undergraduates, it was hard to say which amazed him most, the things they knew or the things they did not know. Perhaps the new knowledge seemed to him the more uncouth.

What this Textopian page supports

How to Know the Fallacies is listed on Textopian as an essay by Samuel M. Crothers, dated 1917 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Good citation fit

Similar titles

Genres

Tags

logic · logical fallacies · informal fallacies · formal reasoning · syllogisms · begging the question · circular reasoning · ad hominem arguments · irrelevant conclusions · reductio ad absurdum · statistics and argument · education reform

More by Samuel M. Crothers